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August 05, 2017

Peaceable Kingdom, an extraordinary, revelatory, and very moving American film about a few farmers and their farm animals is now online. I saw it when it first came out in 2012 and distributed DVDs to friends. I saw it again last week and I still can’t recommend it enough (the title isn't my favorite though!). Also consider watching this 24-min talk by its director James LaVeck who offers a wonderful reflection on Harriet Beecher Stowe and how her "famous antislavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, inspired the making of this documentary film" (78 min).

"A story of transformation and healing, this award-winning documentary explores a crisis of conscience experienced by several farmers questioning their inherited way of life. Growing more and more connected to individual animals under their care, they struggle to do what is right, despite overwhelming social and economic pressure to follow tradition. The film also explores the dramatic animal rescue work of a newly-trained humane police officer whose desire to help animals in need puts her in conflict with unjust laws she is expected to enforce. With heartfelt interviews and rare footage demonstrating the emotional lives and family bonds of farm animals, this groundbreaking documentary challenges stereotypes about life on the farm, offering a new vision for how we might relate to our fellow animals."

August 04, 2017

Dr. Mohan Rao, Professor, School of Social Sciences, JNU, takes on The Lottery of Birth for The Book Review. His review on the web is unfortunately behind a paywall but here is a PDF of the printed version. Some excerpts below.

To understand what is structural violence and what causes it, is this remarkable book of essays ... Namit Arora is an unlikely writer of a book such as this, and thus is all the more convincing ... written with honesty, intelligence, sensitivity and with ease. Arora has read all the relevant literature in history, anthropology and political theory and writes for the general reader. What is significant above all, is his respect for data, skillfully analysed...

How did caste originate in India? How did colonial anthropology and laws shape it, and indeed cast it in stone? Do the Vedic scriptures both create and nurture the system, despite its immorality? Yes, indeed, finds Arora, adding to the voices of those labelled anti-national today. But how reassuring it is to find an anti-national emerging not from JNU, but from the hallowed nationalist portals of IIT! ... When voices are being silenced, when debate is being stifled, we need more argumentative Indians than we have. Namit Arora’s brilliant book has contributed to this, and we must thank him for that.

June 28, 2017

“The thorniest, most fought-over question in Indian history is slowly but surely getting answered: did Indo-European language speakers, who called themselves Aryans, stream into India sometime around 2,000 BC - 1,500 BC when the Indus Valley civilisation came to an end, bringing with them Sanskrit and a distinctive set of cultural practices? Genetic research based on an avalanche of new DNA evidence is making scientists around the world converge on an unambiguous answer: yes, they did.” (—Tony Joseph in The Hindu; more here.)

Even before these genetic studies of recent years, it has long been clear which way the scholarly evidence has overwhelmingly leaned, though the evidence had gaps that the “out-of-India” folks exploited to advance their rival theory. These new findings from genetics, if correct, imply that Vedic Sanskrit, the Holy Vedas and various cultural practices of these migrants (especially the varna system) are not Subcontinental in origin (at least their precursors are not). They came via migration, as did Islam, the Qur’an, and the Persian language. In other words, the religious beliefs of all contemporary Indians—Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and others—have descended from what migrants brought in (and subsequent accretions, fusions, innovations, conversions, appropriations); nor is India the mother of all Indo-European languages.

This ain’t going to make the “out-of-India” theorists too happy. They’re largely a brigade of proud Hindu “scholars” obsessed with the idea that there was no Aryan migration into South Asia, allowing them to claim South Asia as the indigenous homeland / birthplace of Hinduism’s earliest scriptures and their language (Sanskrit, but also its earliest ancestor, proto-Indo European)—and so also of Hinduism (of Brahminism, more accurately, but that’s a separate discussion), which evolved out of them. They also claimed that the language of the Indus Valley Civilization was a proto-Sanskrit, though its “linguistic script” remains undeciphered (it’s not even clear that the inscriptions represent a linguistic script)! Trolls have plastered such claims on countless Internet forums, but they’ve been mostly led by nationalistic windbaggery (aka Hindutva), wishful thinking, and gaps in rival theories—not on solid evidence from linguistics, philology, archaeology or anything else.

One of the best and most widely respected books on this topic is Edwin Bryant’s The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate (2004). As I wrote on 3QD years ago, Bryant not only has a sophisticated sense of history, his synthesis and exposition of a vast range of topics—such as 19th-century historiography in Europe and India, Vedic philology, Avestan studies, historical Indo-European linguistics, South Asian and Central Asian linguistics and archaeology, anthropology, astronomy, postcolonial studies, Hindu nationalism, etc.—is a real achievement. He even evaluates the central claim of Hindu chauvinists—that India is the homeland of Indo-European languages—without condescension and based on evidence. And one of his key conclusions is that though gaps exist in the current migration theories, “there has been almost no convincing evidence brought forward in support of a homeland this far east”.

What inspires these Hindutva “scholars”? This excellent article explains what’s at stake in this debate. Or as Meghnad Desai wrote, “To say that the Aryans are foreigners would make Hinduism a foreign religion [just like Islam]. The aborigines – tribals – would then be the only true natives, as some Dalit scholars have argued. That is why Hindu nationalists deny foreign origin of the Aryans. The Aryans [and Sanskrit] have to be primordially native to suit the Hindu nationalist narrative.” But if the Vedas, product of a nomadic-pastoralist world, and its language turn out to be of “foreign” origin (if not Vedic Sanskrit then certainly its predecessor), that deals a body blow to the Hindutva intellectual project, since their indigenous origins are central to the Hindutvadis’ claim of a Hindu nation. In their view, Hinduism is native, Islam is foreign. But if the foundation of Hinduism too turns out to be of foreign origin … man, oh man!! It’s going to be fun to watch Hindutva “scholars” react to these new studies. I’m gonna get me some popcorn!

May 20, 2017

Friends, I'm pleased to announce Leaving Idaho, a short story set in my hometown of Pocatello, Idaho, now available on Amazon as an ebook or a (very slim) print book.

When Craig Olsen returns to Idaho to say goodbye to his dying uncle, who raised him, he comes face to face with matters he can no longer evade. Among these is the mystery of the young hitchhiker who disappeared nearby, more than three decades ago. Through half-memories, his sister’s reminiscences, and banter with old friends from school, Craig is forced to confront the shadows of his past, including what he must accept and what he must disown about the people he loves.

I left Idaho at the age of 19. And though the story is pure fiction (not my life story), it might provide a window into my complex relationship to the place, about which some of you have asked me over the years.

May 12, 2017

I discovered this excellent 2012 documentary on "the religious hypocrisy of the cult of the holy cow" in India. It shows that cows are not only much abused and neglected but people's pious sentimentality and unholy ignorance have also blinded them to a major public health risk — one that lurks in the milk we now get in India. For those inclined to see things in karmic terms, this is surely the cow's revenge on us!

The film considers the impact of our massive "dependence on plastic bags, which we use and discard carelessly every day, often to dispose our garbage and kitchen waste. Not only are these bags a huge environmental threat, they end-up in the stomachs of cows". Left to roam "because they're not milking at the time or because the dairy owner is unwilling to look after them, the cows have to fend for themselves and forage for food, which, like other scavengers, they find in community garbage dumps. Owing to their complex digestive systems, these bags, which they consume whole for the food they contain, get trapped inside their stomachs forever and, eventually, lead to painful death." A striking and heart-breaking part of the film is the surgical removal of 53 Kgs of hardened plastic (no kidding!) from a cow's stomach.

Watch this film (34 mins) and read here and here about the toxins that seep into milk from the plastic trapped in the cows' tummies.

May 01, 2017

A leading ideological fiction of our age is that worldly success comes to those who deserve it. Per this fiction, the smarter, more talented and disciplined men and women, with some unfortunate exceptions, come out ahead of the rest and morally deserve their material rewards in life. The flip side of this belief is of course that, with some unfortunate exceptions, those who find themselves at the bottom also morally deserve their lot for being – the conclusion is inescapable – neither smart nor talented nor disciplined enough.

Such a view partly derives from what social psychologists call ‘belief in a just world’ (usually amplified by ideology, more on that in the extended Introduction in the book). This widely held belief presumes that humans live under an overarching moral order – whether based on divine providence, karma, destiny, social cause-effect or another principle – which tends to produce fair and predictable consequences for our actions. It’s a belief in just deserts that, to varying degrees, all of us subscribe to. It’s evident in phrases like ‘chickens coming home to roost’ or ‘what goes around, comes around’. This deep-seated belief may well be essential for human self-preservation. It enables us to make plans, engage in practical goal-oriented behaviour and take pride in the outcomes of our efforts. Many aspects of our world even help validate this belief. Indeed, it seems like a natural instinct among people in all societies.

Yet this belief also clashes with the daily evidence of a capricious natural and social world that randomly and unjustly shapes individuals’ outcomes in life. A strong belief in a just world has a dark side. When something threatens the comforting cocoon of this belief, it can lead us to either deny the evidence, or to explain it away using tactics like victim blaming or discounting others’ hardships – especially in the face of systemic injustices and other situations that we can do little about. This often arises from our need to avoid the pangs of guilt we might feel for our good fortune, or to help justify our apathy, or perhaps to get over the emotional discomfort of empathising with the victim.

More here. To learn more about the book and purchasing options, click here.

April 21, 2017

My TEDx talk on "Civic Sense of Change", on why civic sense matters, why we Indians have so little of it, and what might raise it (15 min).

"Is India's civic-sense problem a result of our unrealized potential or the cause of it? As any Indian with knowledge or experience of international travel will tell you, things just aren't the same "there", and things "there" are just different and better. Going beyond the basic factors of national wealth and urban planning, why does India seem to be caught in a cycle of disillusionment, a strong sense of public entitlement and a weak sense of civic responsibility? Namit Arora explains in his TEDx talk how Indians themselves are part of the problem, and what we can do to address these issues." [—TEDxGurugram team]

April 02, 2017

Friends, I’m pleased to announce my first book, ‘The Lottery of Birth: On Inherited Social Inequalities’. This collection of fifteen essays has been in the works for over seven years, and includes extensively updated versions of many essays that first appeared in other online or print venues. Published by Three Essays Collective, the book is now available worldwide. I hope you will give it a look and spread the word. I can arrange a complimentary copy for anyone interested in reviewing the book on any forum. Simply send me a message with a mailing address.

An egalitarian ethos has not been a prominent feature of Indian civilization, at least since the decline of Buddhism over a thousand years ago. All people, it is believed, are created unequal, born into a hierarchy of status and dignity, and endowed not with universal but particular rights and duties. This has greatly amplified the unfairness of accidents of birth in shaping one’s lot in life. Despite a long history of resistance, such inequalities have thrived and mutated, including under European rule, modernity, and markets.

Starting with the deeply moving stories of three writers, Arora explores the origins, persistence, and textures of inequalities rooted in the lottery of birth in India—of caste, class, gender, language, region, religion, and more—and their intersections in daily life. Blending scholarly rigor with moral intelligence, these essays engage with the Bhagavad Gita; the legacies of Ambedkar and Gandhi; Indian modernity, democracy, and nationalism; linguistic hierarchies; reservations; violence against women; identity politics; and much else that today weighs on Indian minds. (Read an excerpt.)

Praise for the book:

“The Lottery of Birth reveals Namit Arora to be one of our finest critics. In a raucous public sphere marked by blame and recrimination, these essays announce a bracing sensibility, as compassionate as it is curious, intelligent and nuanced.” — Pankaj Mishra, Essayist and Novelist.

“A remarkable compendium. The topics Arora tackles here—India’s formidable caste, class, and gender inequalities, and how its leaders, writers, and thinkers have engaged with them—have been tackled before, but mostly in dense academic volumes. What’s unique here is Arora’s seamlessly accessible and personable language, rich with autobiographical context, so we feel that the author has a stake in what he speaks of, above all, as an engaged citizen. From ancient scriptures to Dalit literature, reservations to violence against women, Arundhati Roy’s controversial views on Gandhi and Ambedkar to Perry Anderson’s controversial views on Indian history, these essays are essential reading for anyone who wants to understand contemporary India.” — Arun P. Mukherjee, Professor Emerita, York University.

“Namit Arora writes with envy-inspiring clarity and erudition about the central role in our lives of the many random inequalities we begin life with, such as class, gender, and, especially important in the Indian context, caste. This brilliant book is an immensely useful corrective to the conservative notion that people get more-or-less what they deserve, based on their own ‘merit’ and hard work. Read it. If nothing else, it will surely soften your attitude toward the disadvantaged in our midst, which is never a bad thing.” — S. Abbas Raza, Founding Editor, 3 Quarks Daily.

March 26, 2017

A great deal of fear, excitement, and hype has lately grown around Artificial Intelligence (AI). This is partly because advances in machine learning keep surprising—and even overtaking—us in a growing number of domains, such as disease diagnosis, driving, language translation, and complex forecasting. To add fuel to fire, AI enthusiasts keep making dramatic claims about the imminence of Singularity, human-level AI, super intelligence, and the threat of machines taking over the world and even enslaving us! How warranted are these claims? We owe it to ourselves to better understand both the current state, the potential, and the limitations of AI, to separate hype from reality, and to reflect on the problem of AI philosophically—so we can focus on the actual challenges we’re likely to face as AI becomes more common.

AI can certainly improve human lives on many fronts, but this promise coexists with the fear that AI will cause havoc in labor markets by not just appropriating more blue collar work, as industrial automation has been doing for decades, but even a lot of skilled white collar work. This disruption—which will further concentrate wealth and create jobless hordes and cause new social upheavals in nation-states—will likely occur and needs to be taken seriously. What makes AI-led disruption different than earlier waves of technological disruption is that earlier the loss of manufacturing jobs was met by the rise of services sector jobs, but this time the latter too are at risk, with no evident replacement in sight. This is a recipe for jobless growth, with GDP and unemployment rising together—a grave problem that may well require disruptive solutions.

As for the more dramatic claims about AI, my view, which I articulated in The Dearth of Artificial Intelligence (2009), remains that even if we develop ‘intelligent’ machines (much depends here on what we deem ‘intelligent’), odds are near-zero that machines will come to rival human-level general intelligence if their creation bypasses the particular embodied experience of humans forged by eons of evolution. By human-level intelligence (or strong AI, versus weak or domain-specific AI), I mean intelligence that’s analogous to ours: rivaling our social and emotional intelligence; mirroring our instincts, intuitions, insights, tastes, aversions, adaptability; similar to how we make sense of brand new contexts and use our creativity, imagination, and judgment to breathe meaning and significance into novel ideas and concepts; to approach being and time like we do, informed by our fear, desire, delight, sense of aging and death; and so on. Incorporating all of this in a machine will not happen by combining computing power with algorithmic wizardry. Unless machines can experience and relate to the world like we do—which no one has a clue how—machines can’t make decisions like we do. (Another way to say this is that reductionism has limits, esp. for highly complex systems like the biosphere and human mind/culture, when the laws of nature run out of descriptive and predictive steam—not because our science is inadequate but due to irreducible and unpredictable emergent properties inherent in complex systems.)

February 16, 2017

Last November, nearly 63 million Americans, about 27 percent of all eligible voters, turned out to vote for Donald Trump. While not even a majority of those who voted, it’s still a staggering number and a sizable fraction of the population that cannot be ignored. It’s distressing to think that 63 million Americans actively chose this racist, sexist, narcissistic, wannabe dictator. It’s agonizing to accept that so many believed that he was the best, most qualified, most reliable person among the possible choices, the most trustworthy for steering the American Ship of State.

How is this possible? Who could support this con man? Who could condone his lies and obscenities? Who would trust him with the safety and security of the world today and for generations to come? Who are these people and why would they do such a thing?

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

There are many ways we have tried to answer these questions for ourselves. Not all of the answers have been helpful or insightful. Some, in fact, have largely been myths and fantasies. For instance, many have been chanting the refrains, “We’re better than this”, or “This is un-American”, preferring to believe, despite evidence to the contrary, that the essential American ethos is much too civilized and morally centered to produce this outcome; they wish to believe that the kind of xenophobia we’re witnessing today is nothing more than a fluke or aberration. While it’s understandable that we want to tell ourselves this to shield ourselves from the much darker and more complex realities, such stories can get in the way of real understanding and effective resistance.

February 08, 2017

Where is the equivalent of the ACLU in India? Here is an excellent overview of the scene in India by Alok Prasanna Kumar, a lawyer based in Bengaluru. Support these organizations people; the stronger they are, the better our democracy will be.

The United States is fiercely resisting its regime of deplorables: first came the three-million strong Women’s March, and this past weekend hordes of lawyers joined the battle after the #MuslimBan, obtaining injunctions and emergency stay orders for those affected, promising to fight until Trump’s (sad!) executive order is struck down by the courts.

Here at home, many have been asking where India’s version of the American Civil Liberties Union is. Has our legal machinery ever been called in to defend the public interest with such speed and effectiveness – and is it even possible? Good news: it has happened, and we do have more than one counterpart to the ACLU. The complication: none of these bodies are exactly like it, so there’s no easy answer to the question, "Where is India's ACLU?"

February 05, 2017

In Delhi these days, pollution-talk fills the air almost as thickly as the pollution itself. By now we all get that it’s bad for our health—especially for our young and elderly—but we might feel helpless against it. After all, the problem seems too big, and as individuals we can do little to modernize car engines, clean up road and construction dust, or decommission coal-fired power plants. So what can we do to help reduce the problem and protect our families?

The problem feels complicated and overwhelming partly because it’s a problem of the commons—of the common air that we all must breathe. And yet, it’s difficult to pin down the responsibility: Who creates the pollution? Whom can we ask to stop it? Why isn’t the government doing enough?

Here’s the thing: We know that most pollution is created by any and all kinds of burning—whether that’s the combustion in our car engines, the flames that bake our tandoori naan or “wood-fired” pizza, the smoldering dead leaves in our gardens, or dozens of other things. What this really means is that a good part of the pollution is ultimately caused by the actions of individuals—that is, by us. But it also means that every one of us can take steps to help reduce it.

Among MK Gandhi’s greatest words of wisdom was his exhortation that we must be the change we wish to see in the world. So here’s your chance to contribute more to the solution than to the problem:

November 11, 2016

A venal and debauched crew of clowns is about to take the steering wheel of the most powerful government on earth. This is a calamity of epic proportions. Do not minimize it. Do not attempt to normalize it. And for godssake stop spewing platitudes about bridging the divide and working together to move forward. The new regime has no intention of moving forward.

Stop fretting about understanding the people “on the other side.” It’s not about “sides.” There are 3 types of people who voted for Trump: 1) actual racist, misogynist, xenophobic hate-mongers, including white, Christo-fascists; 2) ordinary, garden variety rubes and naifs, who fell for his self-serving lies and demagoguery, who have little understanding of the world and/or are miserable judges of character; and 3) people who studiously practice intellectual and/or emotional dishonesty to protect and rationalize their narrow, immediate interests. Trying to understand their tortured logic will be a waste of your mindshare.

“Thank you, my friends. Thank you. Thank you. We have lost. We have lost, and this is the last day of my political career, so I will say what must be said. We are standing at the edge of the abyss. Our political system, our society, our country itself are in greater danger than at any time in the last century and a half. The president-elect has made his intentions clear, and it would be immoral to pretend otherwise. We must band together right now to defend the laws, the institutions, and the ideals on which our country is based.”

That, or something like that, is what Hillary Clinton should have said on Wednesday. Instead, she said, resignedly,

We must accept this result and then look to the future. Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead. Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power. We don’t just respect that. We cherish it. It also enshrines the rule of law; the principle [that] we are all equal in rights and dignity; freedom of worship and expression. We respect and cherish these values, too, and we must defend them.

Hours later, President Barack Obama was even more conciliatory:

We are now all rooting for his success in uniting and leading the country. The peaceful transition of power is one of the hallmarks of our democracy. And over the next few months, we are going to show that to the world….We have to remember that we’re actually all on one team.

The president added, “The point, though, is that we all go forward with a presumption of good faith in our fellow citizens, because that presumption of good faith is essential to a vibrant and functioning democracy.” As if Donald Trump had not conned his way into hours of free press coverage, as though he had released (and paid) his taxes, or not brazenly denigrated our system of government, from the courts and Congress, to the election process itself—as if, in other words, he had not won the election precisely by acting in bad faith.

November 05, 2016

In this 18-minute travel documentary, I present some of what we saw and learned during our wonderful 12-day trip to Zambia in November 2015. We visited the beautiful South Luangwa National Park, Lusaka, Livingstone, Victoria Falls, and Mukuni village.

September 04, 2016

My dearest friend, Pran Kurup (3 Oct 1966 — 3 Sep 2016), passed away yesterday from a cardiac arrest. He had been in India for several months. His funeral will take place in Trivandrum at 2 PM on Monday, 5th September.

I met Pran at IIT Kharagpur 31 years ago. After our first year, some of us became close friends and moved into a hostel wing. Pran and I took rooms next to each other. He used to wake me up each morning; I would have missed a lot of classes without his help. Not that I learned much in class; I mostly remember my college years for some of the friendships I made, and my friendship with Pran was among the most precious in my life. He was also, as another friend noted yesterday, the heart and soul of our wing, everybody’s favorite guy. Years later, he is still the glue that holds our wing-mates together, encouraging us to communicate and meet often.

In 1989, after four years at IIT, Pran and I went to the U.S. for grad school. There we shared a journey of personal growth and learning, especially during our two decades in California. We spent much time together. With another friend, we even went on a road trip in 1993 to Death Valley, Vegas, Grand Canyon, and southern Utah. At times we would retreat into the lingo and bawdy humor of our college days, and tease each other about our college crushes and unrequited loves—a ribbing that had a rare and sweet intimacy. We sized up our respective dates and eventual mates. I watched him become a deeply involved dad to a daughter and a son. After a couple of company jobs, he founded and ran his own small business focused on e-learning solutions. We were immersed in each other’s emotional, intellectual, and professional lives.

We often met for lunch, and on some Fridays at Tied House, a brewery in Mountain View, where we always got the same munchies with our beers—grilled catfish strips and black bean nachos. Thanks to him, I laughed a lot when we hung out. We discussed the meaning of life, love, work, films, politics, technology, India. We talked about people we knew, and of our joys and sorrows. Together we celebrated many of our little milestones and events: birthdays, new jobs, visiting friends. He cooked mean Kerala-style curries, and made juicy mojitos for me with fresh mint leaves from a veggie garden he had maintained in recent years, and of which he was very proud.

August 31, 2016

Here is a fascinating documentary film from China. Among other things, it reveals how democracy works in real life and the sort of political animals we tend to become under it, age notwithstanding. Below is the abridged version (34 mins) of the full-length version (52 mins, 2007).

‘What kind of thing is “Democracy”?’

‘Born into an authoritarian state that professes to value the greater good over individual expression, many Chinese children have little familiarity with Western ideals of democracy. Nevertheless, they prove themselves quick studies in Please Vote For Me, which chronicles China’s first ever modern classroom election, held among third-graders in the city of Wuhan. After the students learn the basic tenets of democracy, a campaign for the position of class monitor swiftly descends into an all too familiar jumble of campaign promises, back-room deals and dirty tricks. Funny, touching and full of small surprises, the Chinese director Weijun Chen’s documentary is a wry look at the democratic process and all its chaotic, imperfect promise.’

August 21, 2016

Indian-Americans, a group that includes me, are one of the most visible and successful global diasporas. With the highest per capita income of any ethnic group in the US, we’re often called a ‘model minority’ in America. But what can be said about our politics as a group?

Historically, we Indian-Americans—and here I’m speaking primarily of Indians who’re naturalized US citizens or permanent residents—have overwhelmingly supported the Democrats, more so than any other large Asian group in the US. Over 80 percent of us voted for Barack Obama in 2008, second only to black Americans. This year, less than ten percent might vote for the Republican Donald Trump. Curiously, contrary to what one might expect, success and wealth haven’t driven most of us to vote for the Republicans, who’re seen as friendlier to the rich. What can explain this? Is it because we are remarkably liberal as a group?

Consider some more facts. We Indian-Americans overwhelmingly support Narendra Modi too, at a rate much higher than among Indians in India. We host rockstar receptions for him in arenas like Madison Square Garden in NY and SAP Center in Silicon Valley. This despite Trump and Modi being similar in so many ways. They’re both authoritarian and anti-democratic; anti-Muslim; steeped in nationalism (white/Hindu); allied with far-right groups (Christian Right/RSS); high on patriarchy; economically conservative votaries of trickle-down economics; anti-labor union; thuggish (think Amit Shah); big on defense spending; and so on. Both have provided cover to far-right groups who terrorize minorities. Even if we concede that Trump is worse than Modi—though some will disagree—their proximities are undeniable. So why do we Indian-Americans despise Trump yet love Modi? What’s behind this apparent paradox?

Modi and his Regime

Some might object here, especially Modi fans. They might say that I’m exaggerating the proximities between Trump and Modi. So let’s delve into this first. One difference I see between them is that while Trump wears his bigotry and misogyny on his sleeve and is more erratic, Modi is more discreet and austere. But as I’ll try to show, the two differ less in substance, more in style.

Modi’s stage-managed persona can seduce decent people unfamiliar with his past or with the yawning gap today between his words and actions. In his oratory, he paints an optimistic technocratic vision of India led by research and innovation. He speaks of grand ideas like Smart Cities and Make in India, and social causes like beti bachao, beti padhao and swachh bharat (nearly all of which have been very poorly planned and/or funded). He offers homilies about life, family values, and patriotism. ‘Mine will be a government that gives equal respect to all religions,’ he has said. He champions yoga, the uber-cool Indian export. He is disciplined, works hard, and wants the trains to run on time. In the July edition of his address to the nation, Mann Ki Baat, he discussed the menace of antibiotic resistance and his visit to South Africa, where he claimed to have been freshly inspired by the ideals of Gandhi and Mandela.

July 31, 2016

In this travel documentary (17 mins), I present some of what we saw and learned during our wonderful 8-days in Malawi in October 2015. We visited two areas on Lake Malawi's shores (Cape Maclear, Nkhata Bay), the beautiful Liwonde National Park, and the capital city, Lilongwe.

July 25, 2016

Check out this brilliant documentary film, The Last Train in Nepal, directed by Tarun Bhartiya (59 mins). It's "the story of an international railway line that runs for twenty miles from the little-known town of Janakpur in Nepal to Jaynagar junction in India." The film, a truly wonderful depiction of life on the Indo-Nepal border, is full of riveting human portraits. The rickety train itself emerges as a lovable character in the film. Not surprisingly, Tarun bagged the Royal Television Society Yorkshire Award for Best Director in June 2016.

July 24, 2016

An insightful, though-provoking lecture by Branko Milanovic, a leading expert and historian of global inequality, on his major new work of empirical economics that "presents a bold account of the dynamics that drive inequality on a global scale." It's followed by responses from other experts and Q&A. Among his key contributions is the "elephant curve" which illustrates how the gains of globalization were distributed in recent decades (it benefited much of the world population but not so much the middle/working-classes in the US, UK, and a few other high income countries), and his theory of Kuznets waves, a replacement for the Kuznets curve (a much contested idea in development economics; Thomas Piketty didn't show much fondness for the Kuznets curve in Capital).

April 26, 2016

Here is an 18-minute travel documentary I made based on some of what we saw and learned during our wonderful 15-day trip to Mozambique in October 2015. For more photos and travel notes, check out the Mozambique page on shunya.net.

April 18, 2016

On being transgender in India and glimpses from The Truth About Me, a powerful memoir by A. Revathi, which aims to introduce readers ‘to the lives of hijras, their distinct culture, and their dreams and desires.’ (Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily.)

Most Indians encounter hijras at some point in their lives. Hijras are the most visible subset of transgender people in South Asia, usually biological men who identify more closely as being female or feminine. They often appear in groups, and most Indians associate them with singing and dancing, flashy women’s attire and makeup, aggressive begging styles, acts and manners that are like burlesques of femininity, a distinctive hand-clap, and the blessing of newlyweds and newborn males in exchange for gifts.

Most modern societies embrace a binary idea of gender. To the biologically salient binary division of humans into male/female, they attach binary social-behavioral norms. They presume two discrete ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ identities to which all biological males and females are expected to conform. These two gender identities are imbued with ideal, essential, and distinct social roles and traits. In other words, the binary schema assumes a default alignment between sex, gender, and sexuality. In reality, however, gender identities and sexual orientations are not binary and exist on a spectrum, including for people who identify as transgender—an umbrella term for those whose inner sense of their gender conflicts with the presumed norms for their assigned sex (unlike for cisgender people). Transgender people often feel they’re neither ‘men’ nor ‘women’.

According to biologist Robert Sapolsky, ‘Gender in humans is on a continuum, coming in scads of variants, where genes, organs, hormones, external appearance, and psychosexual identification can vary independently, and where many people have categories of gender identification going on in their heads (and brains) that bear no resemblance to yours’. Many cultures have granted a distinct identity to various types of transgender people, including South Asian, Native American, Indonesian, Polynesian, and Omanese cultures. A landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2014 legalized a third gender in India, including hijras and other transgender people.

Hijras in popular culture date back to ancient times. The fact that procreation underpins the social and familial order in all societies may partly explain why in some societies transgender (and homosexual) people have been seen as useless, perhaps even a threat. What likely helped the hijras survive is that since ancient times, they have been endowed with certain spiritual powers, including to confer blessings and curses, as with ascetics. Perhaps it also helped that even Gods and heroes manifest transgender traits in Hindu mythology: Shiva has an androgynous form, half male, half female; Arjuna disguised himself as a eunuch during the Pandava exile; the goddess Yellamma has the power to change one’s sex; Krishna turned into a woman, Mohini, to marry and spend the last night with the warrior Aravan before his final battle; and so on. The hijras even have a patron goddess, Bahuchara Mata, whose temple in Gujarat is a pilgrimage site for both hijras and others.

April 13, 2016

Knowledge never progresses unencumbered by ordinary human politics. Clubbiness, careerism, prejudice, personality clashes, bigotry, corruption, charm, and other human factors affect the advancement and dissemination of all knowledge, even in the hallowed academies of the West. While the scientific disciplines may have the best inbuilt methodologies for self-correction, still their practice isn’t immune to these impairments of judgment and objectivity.

In his recent Guardian article, The Sugar Conspiracy, Ian Leslie reminds us of how important individual personalities or even the fashionability of ideas can dominate, pervert, or slow the progress of entire fields of science. He writes,

In a 2015 paper titled Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?, a team of scholars at the National Bureau of Economic Research sought an empirical basis for a remark made by the physicist Max Planck: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

The researchers identified more than 12,000 “elite” scientists from different fields. The criteria for elite status included funding, number of publications, and whether they were members of the National Academies of Science or the Institute of Medicine. Searching obituaries, the team found 452 who had died before retirement. They then looked to see what happened to the fields from which these celebrated scientists had unexpectedly departed, by analysing publishing patterns.

What they found confirmed the truth of Planck’s maxim. Junior researchers who had worked closely with the elite scientists, authoring papers with them, published less. At the same time, there was a marked increase in papers by newcomers to the field, who were less likely to cite the work of the deceased eminence. The articles by these newcomers were substantive and influential, attracting a high number of citations. They moved the whole field along.

In this context, Leslie goes on to narrate the story of how, for decades, American nutritional science chased doggedly down a rabbit hole of false conclusions about the probable causes of heart disease, under the influence of decidedly non-scientific factors. A prevailing theory became fashionable, and contradictory data was shouted down; those presenting it were professionally attacked. The shaming and silencing alternative lines of questioning surely contributed to the ongoing public health crisis we now face, in which at least two generations of people are suffering epidemic frequencies of obesity and diabetes. Leslie lays it out,

New Book by Namit Arora

“The Lottery of Birth reveals Namit Arora to be one of our finest critics. In a raucous public sphere marked by blame and recrimination, these essays announce a bracing sensibility, as compassionate as it is curious, intelligent and nuanced.” —Pankaj Mishra